first water cool build, need advice/help

Hi all. So I'm back again for some help . On my first build ever I dropped a thread here and got Amazing help. I actually got about 90% of the parts recommended. This was about 3 years ago or so now. Looking to get a new build going with a custom water cooling loop this time and decided what better place than here for help

So..... My main concerns are not the parts I need on hardware aspect, but the water cool parts like blocks and fittings. Also the tubing if to get acrylic or PEGT or maybe this glass I been hearing about. Also, what kind of water do I use? I read about like dye or something that is no good. And that this other thing like pastels also bad? I don't know maybe I have no clue what I am saying and mixing everything up.

Either way, if someone can help me out that would be amazing. I'm looking for a good water pump and reservoir combo; What size fittings I need; Again what blocks I need and tubes and whatever else someone can help me with.

Thanks so much.

Parts so far:
Case: Fractal Design Define S w/Window ATX Mid Tower Case
Processor: Intel Boxed Core I7-6700K 4.00 GHz 8M Processor Cache 4 LGA 1151
Motherboard: Asus Desktop Motherboard - Intel Z170 Chipset - Socket H4 LGA-1151 Z170-DELUXE (if I can afford it)
GPU: GTC 980 Ti or the 1080 when released
Ram: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz (PC4 25600) C16 Memory Kit
PSU: not sure, what do you recommend?

All help is appreciated.

Welcome back!

Have a read at our water cooling stickies at the top of this forum section to get a better understanding of the maintenance and any other basic water cooling question you might have. Once you're done with that, do a search of your case with examples of custom water cooling loops in that case to get a better idea and design of how you want to go about this. Once you're set on that front, we can move on to where and what you'll need. I will recommend on giving us a list of the H20 parts so we can go through them and see if it fits your build for starters.

Hope to hear back from ya.

on coolant, it's real simple, distilled water and a biocide.
dyes and colored coolant turn to gunk in the system, plug things up and generally make you miserable after 30-60 days.

blocks are easy also, EK, Swiftech, xspc, pick one you like the looks of, you really can't go wrong with one from any of them.

pump/res combo, pick one of those three and once again you can't go wrong.

tubing, depends on how hard you want to work for the looks, me, I'm lazier than a cat after a can of meow mix, it's primochill lrt, soft tubing.

I can understand the dye question. You want it to look good, and no matter what way you go with the loop (soft vs. hard tube, compression vs. barb, matching blocks vs. mix, etc.), it's going to be a lot of work. You want something to show for that.

Here's the thing though: Dye is expensive. Sure, some of the newer stuff on the market is less prone to gunking up and causing issues, but you still have to drain and refill your loop up tp twice as often sometimes. So, instead of needing to do a 6 month loop maintenance, you're talking more like 3. Every time you drain the loop, you need to replace the coolant. I'd much rather distilled + biocide/silver that lasts half a year than expensive nano fluids that I'd need to replace every 3 months. Colored tubing is much easier and cheaper in the long run.

As far as the GPU is concerned, I would wait until the likes of EVGA or ASUS release an aftermarket card with a good cooler, or wait until EK and/or XSPC release blocks for the reference cards for the 1080. From what I can tell, for the money, the 1080 is a better buy hand over fist.

For tubing, I'm with Caddi, but it really depends on how much money and work you're willing to put into this system. Making it look like the professional builds that get sponsored by big names costs a lot more of both than you would think.

Did you actually build a loop? Was it a AIO ready to go no thinking loop? Or did you never get to it?

If you didn't get around to it, many of the parts you bought like pumps/rads/fittings/hose/blocks except the GPU should still be fine.


If you spent hours building a parts list back then it still should be good. Just update the parts list and post it.

If you got nothin from back then then start over, spend a while and post a new parts list.

We'll go from there.